The Serious Guide to Joke Writing: How To Say Something Funny About Anything pdfdrive com

Chapter Two (THEORY): How To
Use Your Brain’s Background
Processing Function
To think is to practice brain chemistry.
Deepak Chopra
I’m always telling my students that if they put in some hard work joke writing,
when they go and have a break, their minds will keep working on it, even while
they consciously think or talk about something else. How fantastic is that? This
is what I call background processing.
It really works!
Think about it really hard for a while, then forget about it and it will come
to you.
Don Draper (Madmen)
Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, writers of hit British comedy League of
Gentlemen  say,  that  despite  going  to  an  office  every  day,  their  breakthroughs
‘very rarely happen when you’re actually in the room thinking about it.’
Rather, they happen ‘in the middle of the night or while you’re at the gym.’
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I’ve  heard  it  all  before.  Students  often  tell  me  that  they  put  in  hours  of  joke
writing to no effect then one came while they were watching telly. Of course it
did! But I am certain that without putting in the initial work, without exercising
your joke writing muscles, the joke in front of the telly wouldn’t have happened.
The brain is amazing. I like to think of it as like one of those early computers,
where you put a card in one end, it goes through all sorts of whirring calculations
and then the result (in our case, a joke) pops out the other end. The weird thing is
that you don’t know that your brain has been busy working away, clicking and
popping,  so  it  will  seem  to  come  from  nowhere.  That’s  why  you  must  always
keep a notebook handy, you never know when it’s going to happen.
Before  I  became  a  stand-up  comic  I  never  wrote  a  single,  what  I  call  a  proper
joke.

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Creativity (are you ready for this?)
is dreaming while you’re awake.
Robert Mankoff
I  was  great  on  the  spontaneous,  you  had  to  be  there  type  gags  but  I  always
wondered  who  sat  down  and  wrote  jokes  the  moment  a  news  story  hit.  Not
knowing it would eventually be me! The reason that I never wrote a proper joke
before I became a stand-up is that I’d never actually set my brain that task, I’d
never sat down and tried, I’d never worked on it.
The  lesson?  You  need  to  show  your  brain  you  mean  business,  get  it  fully
engaged and put in some regular work.
Jerry Seinfeld is said to have had a calendar that he put a big red X on every day
that he did his writing tasks. ‘After a few days you’ll have a chain,’ he said. ‘Just
keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain,
especially  when  you  get  a  few  weeks  under  your  belt.  Your  only  job  is  to  not
break the chain.’
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Seinfeld,  by  setting  himself  the  target  of  writing  every  day,  is  giving  his  brain
lots of time to background process, re-work and re-write. He is not freaking if he
doesn’t write a joke on a particular day. His aim is just to write.
Every now and then go away, have a little
relaxation for when you come back to your
work your judgement will be surer.
Leonardo Da Vinci
The  next  thing  is  that  he’s  turning  up  for  the  results.  I  quoted  examples  above
where things just pop into your head but sometimes your head is so full of telly
programmes and rock music that it’s not until you look at something again that
you  can  see  where  the  joke  is.  That  means  re-reading  everything.  I  use  a
highlighter  pen  to  highlight  the  merest  glimmer  of  a  gag,  so  by  the  third  re-
reading  I  am  just  going  through  the  highlighted  bits.  Often  when  I  go  back  to
things  I  see  both  new  ideas  and  how  the  old  ideas  can  be  used.  Obviously  my
brain’s  been  working  away,  background  processing  and  is  now  presenting  me
with the results.

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